Diamond Age or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

physics major for the next three years, he took classes in whatever he wanted: information science, metallurgy, early music.

He never earned a degree, not because of poor performance but because of the political climate; like many universities at the time, ISU insisted that its students study a broad range of subjects, including arts and humanities. Finkle-McGraw chose instead to read books, listen to music, and attend plays in his spare time. One summer, as he was living in Ames and working as a research assistant in a solid-state physics lab, the city was actually turned into an island for a couple of days by an immense flood.

Along with many other Midwesterners, Finkle-McGraw put in a few weeks building levees out of sandbags and plastic sheeting. Once again he was struck by the national media coverage– reporters from the coasts kept showing up and announcing, with some bewilderment, that there had been no looting. The lesson learned during the Sioux City plane crash was reinforced. The Los Angeles riots of the previous year provided a vivid counterexample. Finkle-McGraw began to develop an opinion that was to shape his political views in later years, namely, that while people were not genetically different, they were culturally as different as they could possibly be, and that some cultures were simply better than others. This was not a subjective value judgment, merely an observation that some cultures thrived and expanded while others failed. It was a view implicitly shared by nearly everyone but, in those days, never voiced.

Finkle-McGraw left the university without a diploma and went back to the farm, which he managed for a few years while his parents were preoccupied with his mother's breast cancer. After her death, he moved to Minneapolis and took a job with a company founded by one of his former professors, making scanning tunneling microscopes, which at that time were newish devices capable of seeing and manipulating individual atoms. The field was an obscure one then, the clients tended to be large research institutions, and practical applications seemed far away. But it was perfect for a man who wanted to study nanotechnology, and McGraw began doing so, working late at night on his own time. Given his diligence, his self-confidence, his intelligence ('adaptable, relentless, but not really brilliant'), and the basic grasp of business he'd picked up on the farm, it was inevitable that he would become one of the few hundred pioneers of nanotechnological revolution; that his own company, which he founded five years after he moved to Minneapolis, would survive long enough to be absorbed into Apthorp; and that he would navigate Apthorp's political and economic currents well enough to develop a decent equity position.

He still owned the family farm in northwestern Iowa, along with a few hundred thousand acres of adjoining land, which he was turning back into a tall-grass prairie, complete with herds of bison and real Indians who had discovered that riding around on horses hunting wild game was a better deal than pissing yourself in gutters in Minneapolis or Seattle. But for the most part he stayed on New Chusan, which was for all practical purposes his ducal estate.

. . .

'Public relations?' said Finkle-McGraw.

'Sir?' Modern etiquette was streamlined; no 'Your Grace' or other honorifics were necessary in such an informal setting.

'Your department, sir.'

Hackworth had given him his social card, which was appropriate under these circumstances but revealed nothing else.

'Engineering. Bespoke.'

'Oh, really. I'd thought anyone who could recognise Wordsworth must be one of those artsy sorts in P.R.'

'Not in this case, sir. I'm an engineer. Just promoted to Bespoke recently. Did some work on this project, as it happens.'

'What sort of work?'

'Oh, P.I. stuff mostly,' Hackworth said. Supposedly Finkle-McGraw still kept up with things and would recognize the abbreviation for pseudo-intelligence, and perhaps even appreciate that Hackworth had made this assumption.

Finkle-McGraw brightened a bit. 'You know, when I was a lad they called it A.I. Artificial intelligence.'

Hackworth allowed himself a tight, narrow, and brief smile. 'Well, there's something to be said for cheekiness, I suppose.'

'In what way was pseudo-intelligence used here?'

'Strictly on MPS's side of the project, sir.' Imperial Tectonics had done the island, buildings, and vegetation. Machine-Phase Systems-Hackworth's employer-did anything that moved. 'Stereotyped behaviors were fine for the birds, dinosaurs, and so on, but for the centaurs and fauns we wanted more interactivity, something that would provide an illusion of sentience.'

'Yes, well done, well done, Mr. Hackworth.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Now, I know perfectly well that only the very finest engineers make it to Bespoke. Suppose you tell me how an aficionado of Romantic poets made it into such a position.'

Hackworth was taken aback by this and tried to respond without seeming to put on airs. 'Surely a man in your position does not see any contradiction-'

'But a man in my position was not responsible for promoting you to Bespoke. A man in an entirely different position was. And I am very much afraid that such men do tend to see a contradiction.'

'Yes, I see. Well, sir, I studied English literature in college.'

'Ah! So you are not one of those who followed the straight and narrow path to engineering.'

'I suppose not, sir.'

'And your colleagues at Bespoke?'

'Well, if I understand your question, sir, I would say that, as compared with other departments, a relatively large proportion of Bespoke engineers have had– well, for lack of a better way of describing it, interesting lives.'

'And what makes one man's life more interesting than another's?'

'In general, I should say that we find unpredictable or novel things more interesting.'

'That is nearly a tautology.' But while Lord Finkle-McGraw was not the sort to express feelings promiscuously, he gave the appearance of being nearly satisfied with the way the conversation was going. He turned back toward the view again and watched the children for a minute or so, twisting the point of his walking-stick into the ground as if he were still skeptical of the island's integrity. Then he swept the stick around in an arc that encompassed half the island. 'How many of those children do you suppose are destined to lead interesting lives?'

'Well, at least two, sir-Princess Charlotte, and your granddaughter.'

'You're quick, Hackworth, and I suspect capable of being devious if not for your staunch moral character,' Finkle-McGraw said, not without a certain archness. 'Tell me, were your parents subjects, or did you take the Oath?'

'As soon as I turned twenty-one, sir. Her Majesty– at that time, actually, she was still Her Royal Highness– was touring North America, prior to her enrollment at Stanford, and I took the Oath at Trinity Church in Boston.'

'Why? You're a clever fellow, not blind to culture like so many engineers. You could have joined the First Distributed Republic or any of a hundred synthetic phyles on the West Coast. You would have had decent prospects and been free from all this' – Finkle-McGraw jabbed his cane at the two big airships – 'behavioural discipline that we impose upon ourselves. Why did you impose it on yourself, Mr. Hackworth?'

'Without straying into matters that are strictly personal in nature,' Hackworth said carefully, 'I knew two kinds of discipline as a child: none at all, and too much. The former leads to degenerate behaviour. When I speak of degeneracy, I am not being priggish, sir– I am alluding to things well known to me, as they made my own childhood less than idyllic.'

Finkle-McGraw, perhaps realizing that he had stepped out of bounds, nodded vigorously. 'This is a familiar argument, of course.'

'Of course, sir. I would not presume to imply that I was the only young person ill-used by what became of my native culture.'

'And I do not see such an implication. But many who feel as you do found their way into phyles wherein a much harsher regime prevails and which view us as degenerates.'

'My life was not without periods of excessive, unreasoning discipline, usually imposed capriciously by those responsible for laxity in the first place. That combined with my historical studies led me, as many others, to the conclusion that there was little in the previous century worthy of emulation, and that we must look to the